The Trouble on the Hill

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Speaker 4 It's at the heart of everything holy, the core of the message, a single phrase, love thy neighbor, to which we might add, woe to him or her who learns to hate instead, as you're about to discover.

Speaker 4 Once upon a time, in a paradise by the Golden Pacific, up a quiet private road among the canyons of Carmel, lived three fine people, and they were bright, loved, and likable, and accomplished.

Speaker 4 The idealistic engineer, the crusading defense attorney, the caring nurse. Who could imagine what these three neighbors were capable of?

Speaker 6 Love thy neighbor, there would be blood.

Speaker 6 Get off my horse! Don't tell me to get off your party! Get off my property, everybody's back up. Get off your pocket.

Speaker 6 When he sends it to a hurry,

Speaker 4 The private driveway was leafy, secluded, quiet. Over a bridge it went, then wound past and under the old oak and sycamore up the side of the canyon.

Speaker 4 And second from the top were two,

Speaker 4 called them grown-up hippies, two soulmates, Mel and Elizabeth, the Grimes.

Speaker 4 It was Kismet that they found one another after two failed marriages each.

Speaker 4 And Mel who brought Elizabeth up to his uniquely funky utopia. Love among the rustling leaves to the tune of wild birds

Speaker 4 and wind chimes.

Speaker 9 And they were just really happy. It was crazy.
It was seeing them together constantly, always holding hands.

Speaker 4 Tom Ellington Wills is Elizabeth's son. He instantly liked his mother's new suitor when she introduced them.

Speaker 9 He was just a really cool, mellow guy, you know, and

Speaker 9 had a real good head on his shoulders.

Speaker 4 Mel grew up on a surfboard in the Monterey Bay, became a defense attorney, ran marathons, got involved with the Monterey Blues Festival.

Speaker 9 My mom was a paralegal

Speaker 9 at a law firm that was directly next door to his law firm. He would constantly ask my mom out on a date.
He said, hey, I've got two tickets to the Santana concert and you want to go?

Speaker 9 And my mom loves Santana, so she really couldn't say no at that point. So they went and they were together

Speaker 9 since that date.

Speaker 4 Within a year, they got married.

Speaker 9 You know, they truly lived each day. We're always gone, we're always on vacation doing things like that.

Speaker 9 I was definitely jealous going to school, always finding out that they were going to somewhere like Costa Rica or somewhere in the Caribbean or going to Hawaii.

Speaker 4 Elizabeth and Mel

Speaker 4 and up on their private hillside, they dressed their overgrown love nest in bits of whimsy.

Speaker 9 Our house was the funkiest house I think I'd ever seen.

Speaker 4 They planted discarded surfboards, upended to grow like flowers, among the odd mismatched sculptures, the signs, the bird houses, those wind chimes, the carcass of a small ancient rowboat.

Speaker 4 An unbuttoned labor of love, in a way, and influenced, though not always tastefully, by those whose need for Mel's legal services was as urgent as their wallets were empty.

Speaker 9 Okay, I can't afford to pay your legal fee, but can I build a deck or can I build a... you know, whatever, can I do, you know, that would be okay with that.
And he'd be like, sure, no problem.

Speaker 9 I could use a deck off this end of the house or, you know, a freestanding unit over here, a one-bedroom over here. I mean, the house, the way it's laid out, was really funky.

Speaker 6 So, this is not a straight-laced or strictly ordered guy.

Speaker 9 Yeah, no, not at all.

Speaker 8 He was a cruiser.

Speaker 4 Elle had been cruising freestyle 10 years when his new neighbor moved in.

Speaker 4 Seemed friendly enough. And certainly he was an impressive man, the neighbor.
His name was John Kenney, a 65-year-old oil exploration scientist with a PhD from MIT,

Speaker 4 a Korean War vet, a former college professor, a world traveling consultant.

Speaker 4 Kenny soon fit right in, joined a local church, befriended downhill neighbors, got involved in local conservation efforts.

Speaker 10 He just loved Caramel Valley, and when you see

Speaker 10 wild spaces like that, you want to preserve them.

Speaker 4 Segolaine Kenney is John Kenney's daughter, though you can probably tell from her accent that she is not a California girl. Fascinating, isn't it? How fate can dictate the shape of a life.

Speaker 4 And that is part of our story, too.

Speaker 2 It was serendipity, as much as anything, that produced the conditions, the distance, the isolation, without which none of this would have happened.

Speaker 2 John Kenney happened to be at a conference in New York years ago. He met a woman there, a doctor, a European doctor.

Speaker 2 And since John Kenney could do his work anywhere, that's how he became John Kenney of Nancy, France.

Speaker 2 And in that ancient city, Kenny and his wife Maria Lynne, the gynecologist, raised their two adopted daughters, who in their way adored him.

Speaker 10 Well, my father is a wonderful man. He has reasoned us the best way he could.
He is tender, he is calm, he is funny.

Speaker 4 As the girls grew through their teenage years in France with their mother, Kenny divided his time between Nancy and his little piece of American paradise, his house in Carmel Valley, with its wonderful view, its essential serenity.

Speaker 10 He's a peaceful man.

Speaker 4 And right down to the sordid sizes of the logs for the fireplace, it's perfect order.

Speaker 12 Yes, that

Speaker 6 order.

Speaker 4 At the end of the road, at the top of the hill, order and chaos were about to meet.

Speaker 4 Up on the canyonside in California's Carmel Valley, Pristine Order moved in beside Cuttered Whimsy. It was 1999, and for a moment, all was quiet.

Speaker 7 Every story has a beginning, of course, and every war an original cause, and in the case of this story, this war, that would be the bridge, which in the year 2000 was in desperate need of repair.

Speaker 7 The neighbors decided if they didn't do something pretty soon, a car would fall through the boards of the creekbed below, and so they set about deciding what to do.

Speaker 13 And perhaps somebody should have warned them then about the law of unintended consequences.

Speaker 4 But as we say,

Speaker 7 the bridge is where it began.

Speaker 4 According to Sigalay Kenny, her father wanted to hire a company to fix the bridge. But Mel Grimes offered to repair it himself.
So Kenny agreed to wait.

Speaker 10 And so, several weeks later, still the bridge was not fixed.

Speaker 4 Frustrated, John Kenney took matters into his own hands. He hired a company to make the repairs.
He assumed the fee would be equally split.

Speaker 10 And Mel didn't pay his fee. He said, well, no, I didn't agree.
And no, I don't care. And so they had to go to court for this.
But my dad won.

Speaker 4 But now the irritant was planted and began to grow.

Speaker 16 Jack was one of those people that really was sensitive to the surroundings around him.

Speaker 4 Christine and Kim Williams attended the same church as John Kenney. They called him Jack.

Speaker 16 I think one of the things that kind of was difficult for him is every time he would come out of his house to go to his car, which was at the other end of his house and facing the Grimes property,

Speaker 16 he would look at their house, which was pretty funky, and a lot of

Speaker 16 things that weren't real neat and tidy and aesthetically beautiful at all.

Speaker 9 To some it was garbage, but to them it was just unique and neat and funky.

Speaker 9 They were up on the hill on their own doing their own thing. No one could see, you know.

Speaker 4 No one, that is, except the man who so loved order, John Kenny.

Speaker 9 I just don't think he liked looking out the window and seeing all the cars and all the funky yard stuff.

Speaker 4 Well, it wasn't just that, as Kenny told his daughter.

Speaker 10 Mel was dumping garbage and branches and all kinds of stuff on his property,

Speaker 10 but also in the garden of others. And this was causing a fire hazard.
And this was dangerous for the valley.

Speaker 9 Only got to hear from my mom like, oh, you know, now this neighbor is becoming a nightmare.

Speaker 4 In 2003, a new neighbor moved in a little farther down the hill, Joyce Scampa.

Speaker 20 Mr. Kinney wanted us to take sides.
He would call me to

Speaker 20 run

Speaker 20 profiles and get maps for him to distinguish exactly where the property lines were.

Speaker 4 Joyce is a real estate broker, so she had access to property records, and she and her husband were friends of the Grimes. But.

Speaker 20 We did not want to get involved in any kind of a feud between neighbors, and we really, really asked not to hear any of the problems.

Speaker 4 Kenny and the Grimes both went to local authorities, tackling on each other's violations of local building ordinances.

Speaker 4 Even though they couldn't even see from their own property some of the illegal add-ons of the other, such as a detached studio. tucked in behind the Grimes house.

Speaker 9 It was a meditation room for my mom, surrounded by all like oak trees that were over 100 years old.

Speaker 9 My mom just really found peace in that corner of the property and really wanted something to just kind of get away, listen to music, read a book, you know, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 And such as the lovely sunroom, invisible to the Grimes, which Kenny added to give him a better view of the pristine valley.

Speaker 10 But Mel, as a vengeance, contacted the sheriff and said that my father didn't have the permit to build the veranda.

Speaker 10 It was just a vengeance, you know, because they had troubles.

Speaker 4 Mel Grimes hired an attorney, Andy Swartz.

Speaker 21 Over the year, from April of 2004 to about April 2005, it began escalating as different issues arose.

Speaker 21 They wrote letters to each other, which were also escalating in tone, and ultimately, Kenny asking the Grimeses to lock his dogs up and not let them run loose.

Speaker 4 And when something awful happened to the animals, the Grimes, though there was no evidence, suspected Kenny.

Speaker 21 Mr. and Mrs.
Grimes' home was burglarized. Three of his cats had disappeared.
The Grimes dog was poisoned.

Speaker 4 Elizabeth confided in a new friend, Elise Beatty.

Speaker 22 When I first met Elizabeth, she told me that she had this real crazy, hostile neighbor.

Speaker 4 Whenever Elise went to visit, she said, Elizabeth warned her, never cross John Kenney's driveway.

Speaker 22 She was frightened of him because he would make claims, I guess would say things to her in the driveway. She would pull up that would upset her and that would frighten her.

Speaker 22 What would happen next? Would it only be a verbal confrontation? Could it sometimes be something else?

Speaker 4 Tom remembered the advice his parents received from one of their attorneys.

Speaker 9 You know, I've dealt with cases like this. The best advice I can give you if you guys can do it is just pack up and leave.
Just move. You never know what this could escalate into.

Speaker 2 Eventually, the growing conflict found a focus. The

Speaker 2 planted a garden to keep the Grimeses off the strip of ground, which, of course, meant they wouldn't be able to use their carport.

Speaker 2 A few hours later, he would claim, he was backing out of his own driveway and saw Grimes driving back and forth over the new garden he'd just planted, destroying it.

Speaker 2 And then he claimed Elizabeth charged to his car up his own driveway and blocked him in. Kenny pulled out his camera, snapped a picture of Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 Then, again, his story, she assaulted him and yanked his camera strap so hard, he said, his head slammed against the door frame of the car.

Speaker 20 After that episode, things really, really accelerated with the hatred, the spewing of words, and the fear.

Speaker 20 And I would say that the fear

Speaker 20 was something that we thought was overly emphasized, but in fact, it was real.

Speaker 4 And the Cold War was now hot.

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Speaker 4 The feud between John Kenney and his neighbors, Mel and Elizabeth Grimes, had reached a boiling point. Now there had been a physical altercation.

Speaker 4 Kenney went to the hospital after the camera strap tussle. Hospital records indicate he suffered a cervical strain, a concussion, and a contusion to his forehead.

Speaker 4 He was given a soft cervical collar for comfort. He went to church the next day.
Parishioners said they noticed a visible difference.

Speaker 26 He showed up with a neck brace and a cane, and his gait was definitely different

Speaker 26 about how he was able to walk.

Speaker 24 He was more hesitant in his speech even,

Speaker 26 and I think quite traumatized by the whole incident.

Speaker 16 We were concerned and asked what happened.

Speaker 16 He said well Elizabeth reached into my car and grabbed my camera which had a strap on it and pulled it against my neck and hit, you know, pulled me into the car and you know

Speaker 16 assaulted me.

Speaker 4 Church friends urged him to go back to the hospital where in addition to the concussion he was now also diagnosed with signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Speaker 4 The Grimes had their own story of what happened. Elizabeth said it was Kenny who lunged at her from inside his car, causing her to trip and become entangled with his camera strap.

Speaker 4 Each side took out a restraining order on the other.

Speaker 4 Two days later, much to Kenny's surprise and humiliation, Elizabeth showed up at his weekly men's Bible class at the church and aired for everyone to hear their dirty laundry.

Speaker 4 asked Kenny's fellow churchmen to pray for them. Kenny was mortified.
And Elizabeth's son saw his mother change.

Speaker 9 I remember growing up, my mom was always like, have faith in people, trust people, love people, people are good, you know, the world is great.

Speaker 4 And now, what did she say?

Speaker 9 Don't trust people, son. People are mean.
People are out to get you. You know, just

Speaker 9 it was a whole different outlook on life.

Speaker 4 John Kenney was also a changed man. Soon after the church incident, his daughters went to spend the summer with him.
He asked them not to talk to the Grimes, but he wouldn't say why.

Speaker 4 They asked about his neck brace. He said he fell in the garden.
So what was he like then?

Speaker 10 He was not talkative.

Speaker 10 He was...

Speaker 13 It's not his usual funny, happy self.

Speaker 4 Oh, no, no, no.

Speaker 10 He was

Speaker 10 tired, even I would say exhausted. He was anxious.

Speaker 10 Yeah, he was scared.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, her father's nemesis, Mel Grimes, had his own reasons to be afraid, quite apart from the dispute with John Kenny. Suddenly, the marathon runner encountered serious heart trouble.

Speaker 9 It kind of just hit him like a freight train one day. He would walk up the staircase in the house and just like his heartbeat just became real irregular.

Speaker 4 Operations followed. He stopped running.
His doctors told him, avoid stress.

Speaker 2 Instead, the neighbors escalated their feud. They went public at a meeting of the Monterey County Planning Commission, Commission.
Dueling statements.

Speaker 2 Mel Grimes went first.

Speaker 25 The one thing that I do regret more than anything else is the trauma that it has caused my wife over the last two years to go through this.

Speaker 25 She has had periods of time where she simply vomited, cried, and couldn't sleep.

Speaker 2 Then, John Kenney.

Speaker 28 None of us, and none of you either, would tolerate a neighbor building something

Speaker 28 or trashing something or doing anything

Speaker 8 which

Speaker 28 damaged the value of your own property and the enjoyment of your own property.

Speaker 8 Wars between countries or neighbors have their own escalating grammar and such was the case here through one issue after another as it got worse and worse and worse. And the old engineer, Mr.

Speaker 8 Kenney, would look out of his window across the hillside and see what he considered to be the dog patch development of his neighbor, the lawyer, Mr.

Speaker 14 Grimes.

Speaker 27 And the Grimes, for their part, looked back at Kenny's house and saw an inflexible and angry old man.

Speaker 27 But conflicts like this eventually have to settle on something concrete, something tangible.

Speaker 8 And so the war between the neighbors focused on one little piece of ground just at the edge of the pavement. A piece of land no bigger than a surfboard, really.

Speaker 8 And that was the stage for the battle to come.

Speaker 4 John Kenney, remember, tried to grow a garden on that patch of dirt as a way to block use of it to get to their carport, and that didn't work. So now he turned to lawyers.

Speaker 4 The best and cheapest option Kenny's attorneys advised was to place a rock, a very large rock, on that little strip in front of the carport. Kenney prepared.
He hired a security consultant.

Speaker 4 The Monterey County Sheriff agreed to stand by when the rock was put in place.

Speaker 4 Then a pause. In October 2006, a family emergency sent Kenny back to France.
He spent the holidays there with his wife and daughters. What was he like at that time?

Speaker 10 The same he was in Cornell.

Speaker 4 He was nervous, anxious, not very happy.

Speaker 10 Not nervous,

Speaker 10 scared of something.

Speaker 6 Scared?

Speaker 10 Yeah, he didn't want to go back.

Speaker 4 The Grimes were away too that season.

Speaker 9 They were out of town, exactly. They were in Hawaii.

Speaker 4 So, for once, peace on that troubled hillside.

Speaker 4 And then,

Speaker 4 January 2007. Kenny back from France.
The Grimes back from Hawaii.

Speaker 4 The climax.

Speaker 4 John Kenney came back from Europe in January 2007. It was time to launch his plan to end the war with his neighbors.

Speaker 4 Once home, Kenney bought a barrier rock, a one-ton boulder. He emailed his attorneys with orders to call the sheriff for a civil standby.
His rock was delivered at 3 p.m. January 29, 2007.

Speaker 4 His security consultant and attorney were waiting for it when it arrived in case things became volatile.

Speaker 7 The promised sheriff's deputy didn't show.

Speaker 4 But nothing happened. Mel and Elizabeth Grimes were not home yet.

Speaker 9 He was coming from work from Salinas, out where the courthouse is, and she was on the peninsula.

Speaker 4 Up on the hill, the lawyer and the consultant gave Kenny strict orders to stay in the house, call 911 at any sign of trouble, And then they left. Kenny's family said he felt abandoned, dismayed.

Speaker 4 He was 72, frightened, alone.

Speaker 4 And the Grimes were on their way.

Speaker 9 They met for a light dinner, and then they drove home.

Speaker 9 Texting each other along the way. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, then I love you and can't wait to see, you know, can't wait to get home.

Speaker 4 At 5.30, the Grimes in their separate cars arrived at the top of the hill, Mel first. He saw the boulder, ran to his tool shed, got a shovel and sledgehammer.

Speaker 4 Elizabeth arrived, saw Mel with his heart condition, swinging the sledgehammer. She grabbed the cordless house phone.

Speaker 30 I'm alone. Yeah, we have an emergency.
It hits Crock Canyon Road in Carmel Valley. What's the comment?

Speaker 30 Our neighbor has blocked our driveway. My husband, who doesn't have a good heart, is out there trying to break down with a sledgehammer.
Okay, this is Cuckoo. His head is blocked in Carmel Valley.

Speaker 30 He's blocked the driveway with what? With a big, huge boulder so that we can't get our cars out. We share a mutual driveway.
Where's the neighbor at? He's in his house.

Speaker 30 Please, please, hurry.

Speaker 30 How old is your husband?

Speaker 15 My husband's 58. She can't do this.

Speaker 30 He was just at the hospital today. This gun is crazy.

Speaker 30 I have to hang up to help him.

Speaker 4 Then, striking sounds are heard on the 911 call. Grimes is hitting the boulder.
His wife tells him, stop.

Speaker 30 No, don't touch it. Let the police come.

Speaker 15 Don't do that, Mel.

Speaker 30 Don't, Mel. What is he doing? No!

Speaker 4 Then they argue about whether Elizabeth should go up to Kenny's house.

Speaker 4 I'm going to his house.

Speaker 4 My no! Hello? Leave it alone!

Speaker 4 Leave it alone!

Speaker 4 And I'll go to his house.

Speaker 30 Can I speak to your husband? No, my husband's like so pissed off. Where is he at right now? He's got a sledgehammer and he's trying to break this boulder.

Speaker 30 Oh, he's back in the driveway, hitting the boulder. Yes.
Okay, and the other male is in his house.

Speaker 4 But not for long. Kenny emerges, walks down his driveway toward the Grimes and the boulder.
Elizabeth confronts him.

Speaker 30 Here he is now. Get off my life! Don't tell me to get off your party! You're on my property every time you back up! Get off his property.

Speaker 30 Please, send the shirt. Hurry.
Okay, there's another discussion starting off. Thank you.

Speaker 15 Oh, shut up, you fat.

Speaker 14 Now some goose is coming.

Speaker 30 Please send someone.

Speaker 4 And then the horror and the warning. What you're about to hear is disturbing.

Speaker 4 Down the hill, Kim Williams heard the gunshots, remembered Kenny's feud, and headed up the canyon road.

Speaker 24 It was like, this can't be happening.

Speaker 26 But, you know, the reality was Mel was dead. He was lying on the ground there and Elizabeth was near death.

Speaker 4 Elizabeth's friend, Elise Beatty, was on her way home, heard the sirens, saw the helicopter arrive.

Speaker 22 I had no idea that the person we watched from this location being unloaded from the ambulance and put it into the helicopter was in fact my best friend. And I watched and witnessed this event.

Speaker 22 Whoever it was to me at that point was horribly horrific. And it really shattered the safety that we felt in Carmel Valley.

Speaker 4 Elizabeth Grimes died en route to a trauma center. Her son, Tom, answered a knock at the door and tried to listen to what the policeman said.

Speaker 9 I really have some bad news for you. And I'm like, what's going on? And he said, oh, your dad's dead.
And then he said, and your mom is dead, too.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 I just, I mean, I fell to the ground. I just, I'm thinking car accident.
I'm thinking, you know, how could they both go?

Speaker 6 You know, they just got back from Hawaii.

Speaker 9 It must be a car accident. And as soon as, I'll never forget it, as soon as the sheriff told my wife or told us that my mom was dead too, that she looked at me and said, oh my God, the neighbor.

Speaker 27 Nine time zones away in Nancy, France, John Kenney's wife, the gynecologist, was in the midst of a consultation. when she got a telephone call.
Her, John Kenney, involved in a murder?

Speaker 27 Incomprehensible.

Speaker 4 She told her daughters the news when she got home.

Speaker 10 And I just said it can't be.

Speaker 10 This is terrible. It can't be.

Speaker 1 How do you process a thing like that?

Speaker 10 I immediately said to myself

Speaker 10 that

Speaker 10 my dad

Speaker 10 as an honest man has felt in danger and that he had to do it for him to stay alive.

Speaker 4 He was arrested, of course, right outside his house.

Speaker 26 I saw Jack being escorted from his driveway. His head was hung.
He was slumped over. He just looked like the world had come to an end.

Speaker 4 John Kenney, the brilliant petroleum engineer, the law and order man, was charged with first-degree murder.

Speaker 4 There would be a trial, and he would take the witness stand to explain why he killed his neighbors.

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Speaker 19 Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. We are on the record in the case of People vs.
Kenny.

Speaker 4 John Kenti went on trial in August 2008 for the murder of the neighbors he had learned to so thoroughly despise. That he pulled the trigger and took their lives was not in question.

Speaker 4 But was it first-degree premeditated murder, or was it self-defense by a frightened, elderly man?

Speaker 4 The only surviving witness, of course, was Kenny himself, and he was about to tell the jury his version of the story.

Speaker 4 The judge would not allow Kenny's face to appear on camera while he testified, but he was recorded on audio tape.

Speaker 28 I was in a high state of fear,

Speaker 28 I was alone and vulnerable.

Speaker 4 He was upstairs making dinner, he said, when he heard a rapping sound. Though he wasn't wearing his hearing aid, the sound seemed to come from the sliding glass door facing his driveway.

Speaker 4 Panic, he went to his bedroom, grabbed his pistol. He opened his door and saw Elizabeth Grimes on his deck.
He said, she swore at him, he told her to get off his property.

Speaker 4 Then he tried to shoe her away. He took a step forward, and she took a step back, back and forth, all the way down his driveway.
Then he saw Mel Grimes.

Speaker 28 He was standing next to the barrier rock

Speaker 28 in his business clothes with a sledgehammer in his hand in a frenzy striking

Speaker 28 my barrier rock.

Speaker 4 And now from the witness stand, Kenny made a stunning claim. He was attacked.

Speaker 28 Say, stop that, get off my property.

Speaker 28 I think I only got halfway through it when when Elizabeth Grimes came up behind me and slammed me in the back of the head.

Speaker 28 I seem to recall that just after she did it, she started screaming as if she were being attacked.

Speaker 4 And then the heart of Kenny's case. He accused Mel Grimes of charging at him with that deadly sledgehammer raised like a battering ram.

Speaker 27 It was at that moment I realized they have entrapped me.

Speaker 28 When I drew my pistol, I did not intend to kill anybody. That was my lifeline to get out of there.
He slammed right into me. The sledgehammer hit a grazing blow on my left upper arm.

Speaker 28 I was grappling with him for a minute to get him away from me.

Speaker 28 At the same moment he pulled the sledgehammer back for a second strike, I cracked him across the front of the face

Speaker 14 with a pistol.

Speaker 4 Then he pulled the trigger.

Speaker 28 Well, knocked him off his pins to my left. I mean that that.
Fired once at him, once at her.

Speaker 28 Paused for a moment, once at him, and then there was a scary situation, and there was a longer pause between the third and the fourth shot, and then at her again, apparently. Oh, my God.

Speaker 28 It happened so fast. This was a pandemonium.

Speaker 28 I was acting half on instinct and self-preservation. I wasn't thinking much of anything.
I wasn't thinking of anything. Except to...
save my life.

Speaker 4 Kenny admitted he fired at the Grimes four times. A fifth shot, he claimed, was a simple accident, and the bullet went into the ground.

Speaker 28 I think he expressed, but my hands were shaking so badly that my thumb slipped off the hammer, and the gun fired, and then the receiver came back and ripped a big gash in my thumb.

Speaker 4 Why did he fire that gun? Military training, he said.

Speaker 28 First, I was being attacked by

Speaker 28 more than one person.

Speaker 28 My training in the Army had been to be attacked by multiple assailants. Take them all down.
One, two, three, four.

Speaker 4 And that, he said, was self-defense.

Speaker 4 After Kenny finished his story, the prosecutor asked him a question. Does he feel any remorse?

Speaker 28 Since remorse, I hate to sound like a school teacher, but as you know, remorse is sadness.

Speaker 28 attributable to a sense of guilt. I feel terrible about everything that happened, but I do not feel remorse because I do not feel guilt.

Speaker 4 Nor did Kenny feel any guilt or remorse right after the incident, claimed the prosecutor. At least he certainly didn't seem to when he placed his own 911 call.

Speaker 4 Here, minutes after shooting his neighbors, said the prosecutor, Kenny expresses concern only for himself.

Speaker 4 911, what's your emergency?

Speaker 15 Yes, sir.

Speaker 31 Um, I'm at South Bank Road.

Speaker 32 Yes, sir.

Speaker 31 I have an emergency.

Speaker 32 What type of emergency?

Speaker 31 I've been assaulted again by two people.

Speaker 32 You've been assaulted?

Speaker 31 Yes, sir, I have.

Speaker 32 Are you injured? Yes. Do you need an ambulance?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 32 Okay, who assaulted you?

Speaker 24 Mel Grimes Jr.

Speaker 32 And how do you know these people, sir?

Speaker 31 They're my next-door neighbors.

Speaker 32 Okay, what do they do to you?

Speaker 31 Well, they rushed at me and tried to assault me.

Speaker 32 For what? What's going on?

Speaker 31 Um, that's as much I think I can say right now.

Speaker 32 No, you need to give me as much information as possible so I can let the officers know that are responding, sir.

Speaker 32 Why did your neighbors do this?

Speaker 31 Oh my God, I really can't tell. I hope you'll come out here, please.

Speaker 32 Sir, I need some information.

Speaker 15 Hello?

Speaker 4 And at his trial, he was consistent. It wasn't he who started it, said Kenny.
It wasn't his fault. And if that's the only story the jury heard.

Speaker 4 But it wasn't. After all, when Elizabeth Grimes called 911 from her driveway that fateful afternoon, the whole incident, the climax of that long war, was recorded through her telephone.

Speaker 4 And now, the entire tape was played in open court every disturbing moment.

Speaker 4 Both were shot twice. A bullet hit Elizabeth in the back.

Speaker 4 So the jury heard the shots, heard them die, heard their last words to each other. I love you.
And they heard this last fifth shot almost 15 seconds after the fourth.

Speaker 15 Hello?

Speaker 15 Hello?

Speaker 4 What was that?

Speaker 4 Canny said the gun slipped. Prosecutor Berkeley Brannon countered it was, in fact, proof that this was not a question of self-defense.

Speaker 19 The defendant shot Elizabeth Grimes while she was down on the ground, helpless.

Speaker 9 It was a coup de grace shot.

Speaker 4 Or was it, as Defense Attorney Daniel almost told the jury, something else entirely?

Speaker 9 Do not let the prosecution convince you that this case is about a patch of dirt. This case is about a 72-year-old man who feared for his life.
He thinks that

Speaker 9 it's a struggle between good and evil. He wanted to be in control.

Speaker 4 If Kenny's attitude were on trial, it seemed, he would surely lose. But the law doesn't measure attitude.
It measures justice.

Speaker 4 The jury in the trial of John Kenney, accused of murdering his next-door neighbors, had a disturbing duty.

Speaker 4 To consider evidence, yes, but as part of that job, to listen to an audiotape of two people dying.

Speaker 4 Over and over they heard it. The sounds teased into something like clarity, enhanced to allow the jury to comprehend what happened.

Speaker 4 The jury foreman told us what he thought.

Speaker 19 Mrs. Grimes is on the phone with the phone to her ear and saying, Mel, the sheriff's coming.
And you can hear Mr. Grimes say, good.
Two seconds later, she's attacked.

Speaker 19 Or there's an altercation.

Speaker 19 It seems incredulous that she's going to say, the sheriff's coming, knows she's got 911 on the phone, and then all of a sudden she's going to launch into an attack of him.

Speaker 19 I think he attacked her, knocked the phone out of her hand, and Mr. Grimes died trying to defend his wife.

Speaker 4 For the jurors, the case boiled down to two things. The 911 tape.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 19 he shot a woman in the back. He shot a defenseless woman in the back.
He hides this gun under his belt. He goes down there.
He knows the reaction he's going to get from.

Speaker 19 He's too smart not to know this.

Speaker 9 And then, of course, he shoots Mrs.

Speaker 19 Grimes in the back. That was about as irrefutable as it gets.

Speaker 9 You didn't have to shoot that woman.

Speaker 4 And so they were unanimous.

Speaker 10 We, the jury, find the defendant, John Franklin Kenney, guilty.

Speaker 4 Kenney was convicted of second-degree murder for killing Mel Grimes and first-degree for killing Elizabeth because the jury decided he shot her when she was down.

Speaker 4 At his sentencing, John Kenney said he had not broken God's sixth commandment, thou shalt not kill.

Speaker 14 And many of his friends stood by him.

Speaker 24 We don't know

Speaker 26 what actually happened up there. We know what Jack says happened, and we have no reason to disbelieve him.

Speaker 16 There's another side to Jack than just what was shown in court and what was shown in the newspapers, that he's a real person. He's a brilliant person.
He's a good friend and good father and husband.

Speaker 4 Prosecutor Berkeley Brannon says he doesn't doubt the statements made by Kenny's friends and family.

Speaker 9 He's led a fruitful life and he threw it away.

Speaker 4 So he did. But still, said the prosecutor, the man doesn't seem to get it.

Speaker 9 I think he honestly does not feel remorse.

Speaker 9 And I think that this perspective comes from

Speaker 9 a certitude that whatever he did, it was right and fine and justified.

Speaker 4 John Kenny was sentenced to life. No chance ever of parole.
An imprisoned, sole living survivor of a petty feud that turned into an unnecessary war.

Speaker 9 To know that the rest of your life you'll spend in a cell

Speaker 9 and you won't be able to experience the beauty of life anymore.

Speaker 26 That's what I hope for.

Speaker 9 I just want him to, you know, regret the rest of his life.

Speaker 9 Living the rest of his life in prison to me

Speaker 12 is

Speaker 9 justice.

Speaker 7 Kenny's daughter and wife were in court to hear the verdict.

Speaker 4 And then they went back to their town in France. And all they had to take with them was their memory.

Speaker 10 I can't understand the emotional distress and the pain of the Grimes's family.

Speaker 10 But we are also very much suffering.

Speaker 27 If you have a message for him now, what would that be?

Speaker 10 I'm okay.

Speaker 27 And it takes some doing to be okay, doesn't it?

Speaker 2 Around Carmel Valley, more than a few once testy neighbors became a little friendlier.

Speaker 24 I can't tell you how many people have, you know, commented that they've mended fences.

Speaker 1 Up at the top of that winding leafy road, up among the oak and the sycamore, the earthly possessions of those two doomed lives remained as they were left, abandoned, mouldering, among the whimsical keepsakes of a house no one lived in anymore.

Speaker 2 And across the once-disputed easement, outside that other stark and empty place, buckets of firewood the old engineer had so carefully sorted according to size

Speaker 2 stayed in their place, still lined up just so as passing years covered all in a layer of decay.

Speaker 2 Until time finally banished the ghosts from that place. Both houses have been sold now, and life

Speaker 2 has returned.

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